Take two Hollywood performers at their peak, place them in a romantic comedy loosely inspired by the riotous Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and watch the fireworks FAIL to ignite. Ben Affleck is a rigid businessman who finds his efforts to make it home to Savannah in time for his nuptials with Maura Tierney constantly confounded by the weather, mechanical failures, coincidence and the temptations provided by wacky free spirit Sandra Bullock, who keeps getting thrown together with him.

Singularly Bullock and Affleck can be very entertaining, but together they do not have much spark between them. They come off more as a brother/sister pairing than potential romantics. Part of the problem is certainly the writing. Affleck's character is written as such a stick and Bullock is stuck playing such an offbeat stock character that the audience is never allowed to warm up to them. The less said about Tierney as Affleck's colorless fiancée, the better. Their misadventures grow tedious fairly quickly and events are not helped by Bronwen Hughes' uneven direction. Hughes either concludes scenes before they have built up a head of steam or allows them to drag on forever. For instance, the events at the hotel where Affleck and Bullock really start to bond and then run into acquaintances of his runs on and on and on. Meanwhile, a potentially hilarious sequence where, to earn money, Affleck reluctantly has to do a strip tease at a gay bar abruptly concludes right when it was starting to hit its comic high point. And these are only two examples. Hughes does not seem to understand what works and what does not. As such, we get a romance that is not particularly romantic, and a comedy with some scattered laughs that dry up long before the film has reached the two-thirds mark. I would venture to say there is not a smile to be had anywhere in the final third of this film.

Another issue that fails is the ending. It probably sounds very mature on paper and it is certainly a non-Hollywood climax, but it is incredibly dull and renders the majority of the preceding scenes pointless. In a romantic comedy, one should never introduce a female character that is more colorful and appealing than the woman with whom the leading man ends up with (and vice versa). That is exactly what the writers have done here. They manipulate two characters together for romance and then in the final moments of the film, they have Affleck do an abrupt about-face and declare his undying love for Tierney, while a wise-beyond-her-years Bullock slinks off alone into the sunset. Affleck needs to sell us wholesale that the sight of Tierney alone has made him fall back in love with her (after a scant moment before he was planning on breaking off their engagement) and it is beyond both the actor and the screenplay to convince the audience of this. Rather than making it seem like Affleck is a great guy, it makes him seem more than a tad fickle. The next time he is stuck away from his beloved Tierney for a day or so, is he going to have another crisis of love? Does Tierney need to be in his line of sight in order for him to maintain the love affair with her? The entire scenario is just plain foolish. Affleck and Bullock have been much better elsewhere, and fans would be advised to find those other efforts.

Looking at this film from the ending, I think that the intention was that this is mainly a story about Ben's cold feet before a wedding, with the moral that worrying to much if you are marrying the right person is not helpful (because you cannot know in advance).

So, viewed this way, the film presents this as a kind of road movie to the wedding, with lots hurdles along the way, including Sarah, and also lots of people (including Sarah) telling Ben how bad marriage is. If narrated believably, this might have been a great film.

Where the film fails is in actually showing that Ben loves his bride and also making it believable that he loves Sarah (I love Bullock, but I failed to see that a character like Ben was really attracted to Sarah enough to jeopardize his marriage). So just before the end, the situation presents itself as a decision between Ben marrying a woman without us knowing anything about their relationship, or leaving her at the altar for another woman for which he did not have believable romantic feelings. Not really a way to make us care for the result.

Still, the ending made some kind of sense out of the story fragments that had been shown before and did a lot to reconcile me with this film.

I cannot imagine anything that would be more fun than taking a road-trip with Sarah Lewis (Sandra Bullock). That is why I really think this film is worth watching. Ben Holmes (Ben Affleck) got something that very few of us ever get to experience - a couple of days with someone who will truly liberate us from our staid conventions and open our eyes to a world that we never knew even existed.

Working with the developmentally disabled, I have to constantly remember that I cannot say they don't want to live or work or do something until I have exposed them to that opportunity and let them make an informed choice.

How many times have we made choices without knowing all the opens - or even that there are options. Ben got the opportunity to make an informed choice. I am not saying I would have made his choice, but he knew what he was doing.

Don't watch this movie looking for a comedy, even though it is funny; don't watch it looking for romance, even though there is plenty to see; but watch it to open your eyes to another world and ask yourself if your world is really what you want.